Article Body:
At a Millis Public Forum held on Wednesday, December 9, Town Selectman James McCaffrey, drinking water committee member Craig Schultz and DEP Director Jim McKay attended to answer questions about the town’s consideration of selling water to local municipalities and/or private companies.
Power company Exelon has recently signed a host agreement with Medway for a peaking power plant which is currently being reviewed by the Energy Facilities Siting Board (EFSB)
The question, however, is water.
Medway doesn’t have the estimated average of 48,000 gallons a day, with up to 190,000 gallons on a peak day, that the the plant would need for controlling emissions.
“The estimated average per-day water use for the Medway expansion is 95,000 gallons, and that’s only if the expansion runs at its maximum permitted capacity – an infrequent occurrence. When the plant runs less, water use will be less,” says Kevin Thornton, spokesperson for Exelon Generation. “Current plans for water include a mix of water from an on-site well, and purchasing the remainder of water from the Town of Millis.”
Millis, says Charles Aspinwall, Millis Town Administrator, was one of several towns contacted about supplying the water. “Millis has six water production wells that their safe yield is 4.3 million gallons a day,” he says. Millis’ average daily demand is 630,000 gallons per day (gpd), and the town is currently permitted to pump up to 990,000 gpd, although if the town exceeds a baseline of 804,000 gpd, it would be required to undertake mitigation activities, says Aspinwall, per Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (Mass DEP). Water required for new developments in the town could put Millis over its permit if it sells to Exelon. “But that wouldn’t happen immediately, and if they do mitigation, there’s no issue,” says Aspinwall. mitigation measures that might be taken would be to institute low impact development bylaws, land clearing bylaws, creating a water bank and fixing cracks in sewer pipes, a lot of which Millis is already doing, he says.
Mass DEP spokesperson Ed Coletta, who says selling water to neighboring towns isn’t unusual, says that if the daily limit of the town exceeded its permit, Mass DEP then works with the town to make the system work properly.
“With the lack of rainfall, you want to make sure each system is doing the best it can to conserve water as much as possible, to find and stop leaks, lower the unaccounted-for water,” says Coletta. He says the goal is to put conservation efforts in place to get unaccounted for water to 10% or less. (Millis, actually, has been below the 10% threshold for the past four years, says Millis DPW Director Jim McKay, at below 65 gallons per person per day. Last year, in fact, the town stood at 7.7% unaccounted-for water and 56 gallons per person per day.)
Recharge has always been something Millis considered, says Aspinwall. Years ago when wells 5 and 6 were being permitted, for example, the DEP warned that if, after 2-3 years of the well being online, they noticed an impact, they could limit the pumping. To prevent this, Millis created two new acres of wetlands in town to mitigate this potential impact, which never actually occurred, he says. At that time, Millis discussed selling water to Franklin, which never came to fruition, but which Franklin asked Millis to consider again this past October.
“(Franklin’s) request is a much larger request – 300,000 to 500,000 gallons per day (gpd).” Millis told Franklin it would need to conduct a feasibility study such as the one Exelon hired the firm Kleinfelder to do for Millis, to confirm that the town would be able to safely supply the water.
The results of Kleinfelder’s study came back in mid-December suggesting Millis has the resources to provide the water for Exelon’s project. Exelon is paying for Millis to conduct a peer review of the study by its own engineers, which Millis’ Drinking Water Committee will then review to make its recommendations to the Board.
Environmental issues are also a concern.
“Millis should, if they decide ultimately to sell water to Exelon, be looking for a pretty rigorous mitigation requirement for recharge of stormwater,” says Margaret Van Deusen, of the Charles River Watershed Association, one of the parties intervening in the Exelon hearings held by the Energy Facilities Siting Board. “Withdrawals clearly do have an impact on the river, lowering the groundwater levels. Groundwater supplies baseflow to the river during the summer months. (Loss of water) shows up as low stream flow, and flow is the most important part of the river in terms of its ecology,” says Van Deusen. The aquifer, she says, is regional, “so the impacts are regional as well.” Van Deusen hopes Millis will consider whether certain environmental tradeoffs are worth a moderately lowered water bill.
Medway Town Administrator Michael Boynton says he finds this concept of mitigation relevant to the discussion of energy. Finding ways to mitigate for the lowering of water tables might be challenging, he says, “but it’s not insurmountable.” As far as energy goes, he says, local officials need to also consider “how to mitigate for the loss of electricity due to the closings of two nuclear power plant facilities. We have a responsibility to the town, for public health, to provide electricity."